Selling on Ebay

[spfoley45]

Would you be nervous about selling on ebay to a buyer with no feedback, or no previous purchases? My 414ce just sold on ebay to such a buyer, and it makes me a little nervous.

Any precautions I should take to protect myself that you can share.

Thanks Much.

Steve

[ebick]

Have they paid ya?

If yes, then I would just make sure you cover yourself on how you ship it so that you know you shipped it safely and timely and have proof it was delivered.

[spfoley45]

He has not paid yet, but only bought it a few hours ago.

[Rosewood99]

Everyone has got to start somewhere. As long as you get the money first, I see no problem.

[gpradzin]

Originally Posted by spfoley45

He has not paid yet, but only bought it a few hours ago.

I have been buying and selling on Ebay since November 1998 and know a thing or two about it. Make sure your buyer is paying through Paypal and is verified and you only ship to his Paypal verified confirmed address. This protects you under the Paypal guidelines. Paypal also charges you a 3 to 4% fee to collect your money. Ebay will also charge you a listing fee and a I think approx 10% sellers fee on the sold price much like a auction house. I have found that most winning bidders with zero positive feedback will simply not pay. There is a trick that Ebay has that lets you control who bids on your auction. It allows you to only let people with a certain amount of positive feedbacks to bid. I usually set mine to "must have at least 5 positive feedbacks in order to bid." This usually keeps the riff raff out. As the other post said, make sure you insure and have tracking numbers and require a signature to accept the package. You try to protect yourself as a seller in every way possible. Hope this helps a little.

[DrRhythm]

Originally Posted by gpradzin

I have found that most winning bidders with zero positive feedback will simply not pay.

I was an eBay Powerseller of vintage musical instruments for six years, until kids came along. I can recall only one incident of a non-paying winning bidder in several thousand transactions, and never restricted my auctions in any way: neither by geography nor bidder profile.

I also only used a reserve twice (for particularly high value items with Buy It Now prices I wanted to give a chance to run before a bid knocked them off) and generally started all musical instruments at £30, irrespective of their 'true value', (whatever that is) which often ran into four figures. I even hand-delivered a Moog to New York next-day from the UK once, as I happened to be going there the day after the auction closed - talk about a happy buyer!

eBay works on the principal that people are basically honest, and has safeguards in place to protect both buyers and sellers for those rare occasions when they're not. Once the Paypal funds are in and you're shipping to a verified address, you'll be fine.

My biggest problem on eBay used to be other sellers copying my listings and photos and the usual lazy Craigslist copy scams.



Doc.

[BGS]

You don't need to worry about whether their account is verified - you're looking for a "confirmed" shipping address. If you ship to an unconfirmed address or don't ship to the confirmed address PayPal gives you, then they can file a claim that they didn't receive the guitar, and they'll win by default. You also need online-viewable signature confirmation for anything over $250.

If anything starts looking sketchy, demand payment by USPS money orders, which you can cash before you ship the guitar.

[RP]

The given suggestions are good ones but keep in mind, everybody started on Ebay without any feedback.

[thedarkestnight]

Non-paying bidders happen a lot on eBay, usually with the 0% feedback but not always.

[220volt]

It happened to me couple of times on small items. Non-paying bidders with 0 feedback. What is their goal? winning the auction and then not paying. I just re-listed the item and sold later on.

[ebick]

Originally Posted by BGS

You also need online-viewable signature confirmation for anything over $250.

I recently sold a Baby Taylor on E-Bay and the auction exceeded my expectations, fetching $274.

I think everything went fine....I did not require a sig on delivery. I showed confirmation of delivery and sent TWO messages to the buyer to make sure eveythruing was ok and that the buyer was happy......never heard anything back.

[BGS]

Originally Posted by ebick

I recently sold a Baby Taylor on E-Bay and the auction exceeded my expectations, fetching $274.

I think everything went fine....I did not require a sig on delivery. I showed confirmation of delivery and sent TWO messages to the buyer to make sure eveythruing was ok and that the buyer was happy......never heard anything back.

Well, you don't have to get one - any seller is free to do what they want. But PayPal does have that requirement. If you don't get a signature for something over $250, the buyer can claim they didn't receive the guitar, and they will automatically win the claim since you don't have a signature.

[ebick]

Originally Posted by BGS

Well, you don't have to get one - any seller is free to do what they want. But PayPal does have that requirement. If you don't get a signature for something over $250, the buyer can claim they didn't receive the guitar, and they will automatically win the claim since you don't have a signature.

I'll have to take that as a lesson learned, but given that it's been about 3 weeks since the transaction....I would hope that if the buyer tried to pull something like that, the questions "why did you wait so long" and "why didn't you respond to any inquiries by the seller" would come up.

[BGS]

Originally Posted by ebick

I'll have to take that as a lesson learned, but given that it's been about 3 weeks since the transaction....I would hope that if the buyer tried to pull something like that, the questions "why did you wait so long" and "why didn't you respond to any inquiries by the seller" would come up.

I think with PayPal/eBay they have either 45 days or 60 days - with credit cards it's usually 60 days, and sometimes up to 180 days. Last year I filed an "item not received" dispute with my credit card for two Froggy Bottoms that never showed up, and that was about 150 days after purchase. The seller (who didn't respond to the dispute, FWIW) couldn't prove delivery with a signature, so I was able to recover my money.